


Twice the Speed of Sound

by keptin



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Extended Scene, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 15:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9767270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keptin/pseuds/keptin
Summary: “Dr. Erskine said that the serum wouldn't just affect my muscles, it would affect my cells. Create a protective system of regeneration and healing. Which means um...I can't get drunk. Did you know that?”





	

**Author's Note:**

> title from [just a song before i go](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UoneXjfBC0) by crosby, stills & nash.

Seven bottles lined up on the edge of the table-- it’s the only one left standing in the middle of all this wreckage. The table next to it is missing two legs on one side and now leans over so fat that the only thing keeping it from hitting the floor is the chair that lays on its side partially underneath it. Why is that table damaged and this table still upright? Maybe that’s why Steve is sitting there, but really, he just wanted a place to sit and drink.

Not that it does anything. Well-- not that it serves its intended purpose, anyway. It warms his stomach, but only for a moment, until the heat dissipates and he’s left feeling as cold as he used to on long winter nights. The taste reminds him of the nights when he and Bucky would stumble back home from a date, Bucky doing most of the work keeping Steve on his feet, his cheeks dusted pink, his breath sweet and smoky, his lips…

A bottle falls from the row, hitting the floor and shattering before Steve has a chance to catch it. Heels click carefully through broken glass as he drags a hand down his face.

“Dr. Erskine said that the serum wouldn't just affect my muscles, it would affect my cells. Create a protective system of regeneration and healing. Which means um...I can't get drunk,” he says, unprompted. “Did you know that?” His voice is soft, as if speaking too loudly will knock another bottle from the table, but in the permeating silence, it’s as if he’s back on the stage, decked out in tights and theater makeup.

For the first time in what feels like only seconds, but has likely been a good few hours, he looks up. Peggy’s eyes, when he meets them, are impassive. It’s that English stiff upper lip. Everyone has been affected by this loss, and he knows she’s no exception, it’s just that… well, he was Bucky. He was Bucky.

“Your metabolism burns four times faster than the average person,” Peggy replies. “He thought it could be one of the side effects.”

It’s hardly reassuring, but she’s there, and the fact that she’s there to keep Steve company and fill the yawning silence for a while is comforting.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she adds, after a beat. But it’s so wrong, objectively, that Steve can’t stop himself from scoffing.

“Did you read the reports?” he counters, like he’s challenging her, half-turning in his chair to face her.

“Yes."

Her expression hardens with her conviction-- and, honestly, god bless Peggy Carter-- just as Steve’s sinks even more than it’s already fallen.

“Then you know that’s not true.”

For a moment, Peggy’s eyes flick away towards the long, growing line of bottles at the end of the table, and Steve thinks he’s won whatever kind of convoluted battle this is. But, like him, Peggy apparently doesn’t know when to quit.

“You did everything you could,” she insists, glaring at Steve when he gives a short, wry breath that could be mistaken for a chuckle. “Did you believe in your friend?”

She raises an eyebrow at him. Steve just looks up at her. _Please, don’t ask me this. You know you know the answer._ That brow arches higher.

“Did you respect him?”

Those questions hardly deserve to be dignified with an answer. What he felt for Bucky-- what he still feels for him-- go beyond simple trust or respect. Deeper, so deep that somewhere along this line, loving Bucky had become written into the fabric of his soul. It shows plainly on his face, and Peggy must see it, because her eyes become gentler. The steel in them softens.

“Then stop blaming yourself.”

What, stop owning up to the fact that he was responsible for the death of his--

“Allow Barnes the dignity of his choice. He damn well must have thought you were worth it.”

Silence settles again. Steve doesn’t stop blaming himself, expects he’ll go to his grave carrying that same guilt, but he knows that if Bucky was there, he’d be saying the same thing as Peggy. _She’s right, you big lug,_ he can almost hear him say. _Now get off your ass, grab your pantyhose, and go kill some Nazis._ What’s more, he knows that if he had been the one who’d gotten shot out the side of a train car and Bucky had watched him fall, he wouldn’t blame Bucky for not being able to reach him, and he certainly wouldn’t want him to bear this burden.

The fact of the matter, though, is that if Steve had just reached a little farther a little sooner, Bucky’d be here right now with him.

“I’m going after Schmidt,” Steve informs Peggy. “I’m not gonna stop until all of HYDRA is dead or captured.”

This isn’t what they created him for, but he knows that this is exactly what Captain America, if he was real, would do, and that’s who he has to be now. Steve Rogers may still be breathing and talking, but the truth is, he’s lying dead at the bottom of that ravine where Bucky fell.

Peggy purses her lips in what may be sympathy, or may be knowledge that all that’s left now is what they’d injected him with in the lab when he’d first become their Captain America. He’s made out of serum and vengeance and a whole lot of heartache.

“You won’t be alone,” she promises him, touching his shoulder briefly, but instead of turning and leaving, she pulls up a three-legged chair and drags it up to Steve’s table, sitting beside him. He hears her count the row of bottles aloud before she reaches across him to finish one he hasn’t touched yet, but is already opened and mostly-empty. She finishes it in a few long pulls, then places it next in the row, leaving a space for the bottle that had fallen.

“He must have been worth a lot to you,” says Peggy, her eyes fixed on that empty space. Steve feels himself nod mechanically.

“He’s everything,” he either agrees or corrects. Why he’s admitting this to anybody else is beyond him. If anything, he should have told Bucky, back in the safety of their drafty little apartment. He should have told him every single day, kissed it into his skin, but now Bucky’s gone and he’ll never hear it. At least now someone else knows-- not the gist of it, probably, but enough so that the truth will outlive Steve.

It _will_ outlive Steve.

Peggy doesn’t flinch or show any surprise at the admission. In fact, she just nods along with him, as if it’s just a fact of the universe. The sky is blue, the sun rises in the east, and Steve loves Bucky.

Loved, he supposes, only he still loves him. Just because Bucky’s body-- oh, god, his body-- is going blue and likely buried under snow by now doesn’t mean Steve’s feelings have gone away. The all-encompassing adoration is still there, but now it’s sitting alone in the Bucky-shaped hole that’s been carved out of Steve’s chest. It rests there like a stone at the bottom of a river.

“He loved you, too.”

Peggy’s voice brings Steve back to the present, and he startles, his shoulders tensing and his palms pressing flat against the tabletop in case he needs to push himself up and hightail it out of there. His neck is tight, and it makes his head buzz.

“I- What?”

“Don’t play the fool, Steve,” Peggy tells him, meeting his eyes, and he expects there to be a standoff, but there isn’t one. She’s just watching him. Showing him that she knows.

“I’m an agent,” she continues, “I don't exactly make a habit of being wrong, or unobservant. It was plain as day that he loved you. Were those feelings returned?”

“He didn’t…” Steve trails off, shaking his head and looking back down at the table, turning his glass over in his hands before pushing it away from himself. “What’s it matter now?”

What’s the point if he’s here and Bucky isn’t? Loving him sure didn’t do Bucky any good. The thought suddenly hits Steve that if Bucky hadn’t loved him, he’d still be alive, and it punches the air from his lungs and makes him feel like he’s still got asthma. “Jesus,” he breathes, his voice catching on the second syllable as he presses a hand over his mouth. The last things that have touched it are bottles and Bucky’s lips; if he concentrates, he can still feel the warm press of them.

A small hand rubs smooth circles on his back. “Oh, Steve,” Peggy murmurs. The tears come, then, which is answer enough.

She leaves an hour later, because she may be Steve’s friend, but she has work to do and needs her rest. Steve stays until the sun comes up again, and it lights the room around him, but all he can see is the shattered glass on the floor.

* * *

 When he noses the plane into the ocean, Peggy doesn’t fault him. She respects the dignity of his choice, and knows that, to him, Bucky was worth it.


End file.
